


Heat

by AngiePen



Series: Heat and Shade [1]
Category: Actor RPF, Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 16:09:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngiePen/pseuds/AngiePen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viggo does not touch Orlando.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jasmineskie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Jasmineskie).



> This is for Jassy, with a hug, because she keeps cranking out stuff that makes me smile.

The bright sun beating down out of the rich blue sky didn't feel right. Crystal sparkles weren't supposed to be glittering off the water, rippling like liquid sapphire with the rhythms of the tide. The gannets weren't supposed to be soaring lazily over the beach, riding the waves of heat-shimmer. It was winter, by the reckoning of home and Viggo's instinctive calendar, and the entire scene was just wrong.

The tug he felt toward the young man stretched out on a blanket a dozen paces away was wrong. Not the friendship, which was a natural response to the sweet, giddy and slightly shy person who seemed to like everyone and delighted in showing it. Not the admiration, which was fully justified by a talent that could radiate such depth of feeling from a nearly blank expression. Not the respect, which came from watching the professionalism that kept him going take after take, through heat and cold, exhaustion, frustration and pain. Not even the attraction, really; everyone with eyes and some fraction of a soul could see the esthetic appeal of a beautifully chiseled face and a form that looked like it had posed for Michelangelo.

No, it was the heat he felt inside which, to his gut, was just as wrong as the scorching weather.

He moved closer, his bare feet making a soft _crush crush crush_ sound in the sand, and saw that Orlando's eyes were closed. The lack of sunglasses and the patch of shade slightly to one side of his head suggested that he was actually asleep, and had been for a little while.

Any other day he would've woken him up, possibly with a handful of ice from the cooler set down beside the blanket. Viggo was currently on the short end of the practical joke war, since the plastic wrap incident earlier that week, and retaliation had become instinctive.

But not today.

Today he stayed quiet, stepping closer -- _crush crush crush_ \-- and just stood looking down at the body stretched out in the sun. An image wriggled up out of his dreams and hovered before him, of the same body sprawled in exactly the same relaxed, loose-limbed posture on his bed, the sleeping smile an embryo of the glowing delight which could light up Orlando's whole face and shred Viggo's heart. He breathed in, slow and deep, and the salty smell of the air became a salty musk, the ghost of orgasms past.

A soft, plaintive sound vibrated in his throat, bringing his focus back to the heat and the beach and the young man on the blanket. The eyes were still closed, the body relaxed and still.

Viggo shifted, bent, and lowered himself onto the blanket, one knee planted between sprawled thighs, the other just to one side in a half-straddle. Not touching, no. Touching without permission was wrong. Touching without even awareness was despicable.

He did not touch. Leaning over one hand on the blanket, he did not touch. He cupped the squarely planed jaw in his palm, but did not touch. His fingers drifted over smooth skin, his thumb traced a carved cheekbone, not quite skimming, floating a scant millimeter above the surface, tenderly not touching.

His not-touch moved down over the neck, tracing muscles and tendons, then curved onto the breadth of shoulder. His hand glided on a cushion of heat, the warmth of the skin beneath his palm soaking in with a gentle tingle.

His hand passed over the swelling shoulder and down onto the upper arm, not touching the strongly formed chiaroscuro of contour. The pale skin of an inner elbow drew his fingertips and he traced slow circles around and across, his imagination providing the petal-softness which he was not touching.

On with exquisite slowness to the forearm, where he smoothed a lingering not-touch through the shaded valleys delineating lean muscle. He traced the rippled tendons of the wrist with the tip of his thumb, imagining, sensing -- feeling but not touching the surging of _warm warm warm_ as each spurt of blood passed through the invisible arteries nestled just beneath the skin.

He paused over Orlando's hand, hovering, uncertain. He dipped a finger into the shallow cup of palm, feeling the heat there like a handful of water, then withdrew. This slender, callused hand had pushed his chest, smacked his arm, tickled his sides, ruffled his hair. Rubbed his back. Hugged him. Hand-to-hand was the most innocent of touches, offered to strangers without thought or care; there could be nothing wrong with clasping a hand, a moment of contact.

But the meeting of hands -- press of palms, curve of fingers -- grew and filled his mind until it pulsed just beneath his skin, and became the most intimate of all possible touches, more so than a sympathetic backrub or a laughing hug. Hands were _for_ touching, and two hand touching each other -- skin to skin matching nerves to nerves connecting mind to mind -- became an image of unbearable nakedness.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then stood, removing the knee from between his thighs, the feet from his blanket, the shadow from his face. The sand burned Viggo's feet but that would pass. The heat in his palm, heat he'd carefully collected from sleeping skin, would remain long after his soles had cooled.

He turned away.

_crush crush crush crush crush_

**Author's Note:**

> This was a personal challenge -- I wanted to see how high I could crank the heat without having the characters actually touch, and without resorting to a cop-out like phone sex.


End file.
